Monday, February 23, 2009

Street Preachers at ASU

For the last 8-10 days, two guys have been making regular appearances on ASU's campus engaging in what is colloquially referred to as "street preaching." I've listened and dialogued with them multiple times (more listening than dialoguing) and a few things they've said have peeked my curiosity. The guy I talked to was John, and I never found out the other guy's name. John has crutches because he tore his right ACL, which probably sucks. Also, they were out in front of Coor Hall today accompanied by a number of police officers. I'm interested to know if the cops were preemptive or if there had already been an incident. Whatever.

(I'm going to say right here, just for Ben, that there will be metaphysics in this post as I talk about God and stuff. See, Ben, I DO love you.)

One thing that was very much apparent listening to John and his friend over the course of a week and a half is the belief that God wants us to go heaven, a common notion and one held by John and his friend. What bothers me is the logic, which I'm sure many Christians don't attend to: to want something is to lack that something; to lack something is be imperfect; God is a perfect being; thus, God cannot want us to go to heaven, or else he's not, as normally presumed, a perfect being.

There are those who would assert that logic, like everything, is the product of God and thus he is not susceptible to it. Of course, God gave us things like logic, speech, curiosity (and free will?) so we could discover for ourselves various conclusions about our existence. Obviously he's hoping we'll lead ourselves to faith in him. So, in the course of things, we will necessarily be employing a bit of logic (hopefully a lot) and naturally God will, at times, be in the hot seat. He must realize the limits of faith and so it seems a foregone conclusion that logical reasoning will constitute a large sum of our investigations. Hence his susceptibility to logic; otherwise, what the hell's the point?

A second idea that snatched my interest is the notion that God made everything and controls everything and so we are all subject to his will, a passage that John's friend was apt to repeat at the end of every segment he presided over (which got kind of annoying when he was attempting to draw in people at the intersection of College and University because he would say it every 45 seconds). Aside from what I already mentioned previously about God' seeming inability to want (How does he have a "will" if he cannot want? Further, if he lacks a will, is he perfect?), a few things jump out of my skeptical brain.

First, I wonder about the leap from God creating and controlling everything to our being supposed to submit cosmic authority to him. Just because he has the biggest stick doesn't mean he's right - a la Stalin, Caesar, Reagan, Bush, other dictators/totalitarians/fascists/bleh.

Second, this seems at odds with the notion that God gave us free will so we would come to him of our own accord. It's well-documented throughout the latter half of the Bible that God wants us (if he can want...) to choose him freely, without being forced. So then why isolate and emphasize his absolute power and control? Or that we're all going to hell for sinning (which is another favorite mantra of John and his friend)? This is the same tactic rulers use to subjugate populations, to bring them under an iron heel. It forces us to believe: if we don't then it's our loss and we go to hell - which blows. So aren't I forced to believe in him? (Enter Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov...if you like that book, I guess. Ben does, if I recall.)

A third point of interest was what John and I discussed while standing outside Coor Hall today: objective morality. He dialogued in support of an objective morality, "proved" by God, the Bible, Jesus, etc. I tried to wrest the conversation away from a particular instantiation of objective morality towards a more general conversation about whether objectivity exists or matters.

His view was typical (and I don't mean that condescendingly but literally): God gives us objective truth: without him we wouldn't have it; thus, we need him (notice how this doesn't argue for God's existence but for God's necessity; just because we need him doesn't mean he's there). My view was that objective morality might not exist. He rejoined with a question about how we, in that case, determine right and wrong, good and evil. I suggested the bigger club would write the history. Naturally, he wasn't pleased.

So I talked at length, explored really, about some ideas floating in my head. I thought about how we humans are so afraid of a nonobjective reality that we refuse to entertain subjectivity. We refuse to ask "What if?" We're probably afraid, I suppose, of navigating a world without a safety net from which to operate. Objectivity gives us that net, for if we have a solid, tenable base from which to work, self-justification becomes that much easier (and humans must have self-justification or we explode).

Moreover, how do we convince people to help each other if all we can rely on is power and not objective reasoning? I'm not sure. Humans have spent a great deal of time killing each other and wandering within religion rather than considering subjective realities.

And why not develop a system based on nothing and try to argue cogently for its instantiation? Certainly any tenacious skeptic will refuse to entertain anything grounded in subjectivity (even if backed up by copious amounts of logic), but we only have to appreciate them to a point. It's not a perfect system, but we've just seen that nothing will be perfect, maybe not even God, so we should all just pick something and run with it.

John, however, didn't seem to appreciate my ideas, but he was clearly aware of their severely rational nature, as evidenced by his tactic of slightly altering the subject or calling out to other people in the crowd that had since gathered to listen to us talk (it's really interesting how many people just stop by and gather closely, occasionally jumping in to vigorously and aggressively defend one side or the other). I'd apparently stumped him a few times, or at least moved too fast for him to put it all together (which isn't fair I realize - and I sympathize with him for I find myself unable at times to process everything presented to me; I sometimes need to write it down so I can properly digest it as a whole). I imagine it doesn't help, as well, that I've spent a lot of time considering God and religion, and many more ideas, perhaps, than John has come into contact with.

On that last point: I've listened to a lot of street preachers, more so since coming to ASU - they're everywhere. I'm very familiar with what they're going to say both initially and in response to various attacks and arguments. I'm also aware of the rhetorical tactics they use to get people to think twice about what they believe, especially about right and wrong. For instance, John gave me an opportunity to walk up and start talking to him by asking the passing students if they were any atheists around. I responded affirmatively and knew that he was going to immediately ask about how right and wrong are developed for me and all sorts of things about Hitler and the Nazis to whether or not I've broken any of the Ten Commandments. They tend to run through the same lines of thought while trying to deconstruct the non-Christian's views to "show" that they're of little value. Having this knowledge, it was easy to see where he was going and thus direct the conversation to my advantage and whims.

In any case, God and his Bible have a lot to offer in terms of logical puzzles. Most of them are irresolvable (as far as I can tell) and leave one in a state of constant perplexity. Sadly, many Christians (and let's not forget Jews and Muslims and they're attendant religious paradoxes) don't bother to work through them. Of course, this is really a critique of most religious people, even "hardcore" ones, who are completely ignorant of their own system of thinking. They say they're Christian but are unaware that they've admitted to the severe subjugation of women and the idea that slaves should not rise up against their masters but should sit tight and wait for heaven.

People will argue, naturally, that such notions are era-relevant, meaning they don't relate to modern times (most of the stuff in Leviticus is usually lumped into this group of "outdated precepts"). An obvious rejoinder is to question which precepts are phased out and when; also, why were they accepted into the Biblical cannon if they were time-sensitive? Why didn't God talk to someone and get things updated during, say, the 18th century? Why wasn't there a prophet every hundred years or so that would take the old and the new and save the wheat/cut the chaff? Certainly God with his limitless magisterial powers could make any of the above happen. He sent Jesus, didn't he, floods and all that stuff?

But it doesn't appear that John nor his friend have taken the time to sort all these things out, though, to be fair, I didn't directly talk to John's friend, but from what he was saying I could imagine the similarities to John.

John asked me at the very beginning why I was an atheist. I told him that all decisions are made on the basis of probability because nothing can be known with absolute certainty, a notion to which he assented. I then said that based on everything I've seen, read, discussed, and digested, it was more likely that either God didn't exist or if he did, his nature was radically different from any evident within the Western religious tradition.

After agreeing to the original idea about probability governing decision-making, he didn't appear to feel qualified to respond. I think he asked the girl next to me about Hitler.

(I should add here that Eastern religions, with their courage to embrace and revel in the contradictions and paradoxes obvious in our existence, get closer to the mark, I suppose.)


4 erotic poetry prompts:

Steven Philippi February 26, 2009 at 12:49 PM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
I Really Heart Tinfoil Hats! March 2, 2009 at 11:44 PM  

So, I decided to go ahead and weigh in here for a bit after your obvious prods. First, I noticed a decidedly eastern bent to the idea that want implies imperfection. Does this mean that the elimination of desire begets perfection? Rather, is this to say that perfection in its entirety is simply an emotional state of being? Is a vegetable perfect? Or does one have to have the capacity for want without having the want to achieve perfection?

Secondly, it seems that the want logical impliciation hinges on two separate inferences of the meaning of "want". You first use want to denote a lack. You then use want to denote a desire of God's. The meaning of both connotations are different. After all, it is possible to "want" as it relates to desire rather than lack, something that is in our grasp. For instance, I can want that a woman to love me, and a woman can love me. The wanting has no bearing on the existence. Unless it is used in the former context to denote a lack, want does not equal an absence. If the implication of "want" was meant to be the same, than the fact that God wants us to go to heaven would almost imply that God lacks a people (us) that are going to heaven. But, paradoxically, (playing Devil's advocate), God has given us a way to heaven through his son, Jesus Christ. You way that to want something is to lack something. Clearly, God does not lack a people that are capable of entering Heaven. Rather, God desires his people to go to Heaven. I desire to sleep at the moment. Does this mean that I lack sleep? Not necessarily. I've wanted sleep plenty of times when my body didn't lack it for want of having just woken up.

It's often humorous, but rarely are Christian's the best spokesmen for Christianity. I enjoy listening to those two street preachers quite a bit. In my younger days, I used to get riled up against various preachers (Brother Steve at Penn comes to mind). I used to want to argue with them. But I soon came to realize what it was that caused me such fits when I was around them. These guys, these fucking secure assholes, had something that I didn't have. Ultimately, they were right about certain things. First off, they had an idea of what a metaphysical existence was. I did not. And the fact that they were so secure in theirs I found to be infuriating. They had something that I did not, and I couldn't reconcile that with idea with who I was. I kept wondering, how is it that so many people believe that Christianity is correct when I cannot even begin to approach a belief approximating a likeness of Christianity? I would tell myself that it was ignorance that engendered such beliefs. I almost clung to that like a security blanket. And so when someone would begin prosletyzing, I would liken that with ignorance. It was only natural to follow this with anger and a desire to "prove" them wrong. But somewhere along the way, it hit me. . . my anger was proof that I had a lack that I was unable to fill.

So, I decided then and there that I wouldn't want for whatever it was that brought people to religion. I gave up all desire to explore metaphysics. I actually think that this has made me a better person. I am able to approach those that are so wrapped up in their beliefs with a perspective that I once lacked. I can have close friends that are devout without beginning a "discussion" every time the subject of their beliefs has come up. What is the point of this you may be asking? Well, I think the point of this has been in some small way to wonder what motivates you Jeffrey when you engage the street preachers? Do you actually find yourself wanting something else? Is it that want coupled with their seeming lack of want that drives you? The logical proof of God's existence is a philosophical question that Kierkegaard, Kant, etc. had wrestled with and failed to quantify. I can only imagine then that they were reduced on some level to blind faith to fill such a lack in themselves. Perhaps you should take a cue from them then? Or perhaps intellectualism is driving you? If such an intellectual pursuit is interesting to you, perhaps you'd be better served by having such discussions with those that are more equipped to deal with questions beyond the grasp of blind faith. I understand that the Catholic's require that their missionaries and priests have a certain amount of theological and philosophical education that would be better suited for such a discussion. Perhaps the Newman Center might be a good stop in your metaphysical journey then? I had a friend or two that found that place enlightening. . . so much so that these friends converted.

The Filthy Logician March 3, 2009 at 12:23 AM  

I'm really glad I finally got to hear why you detest metaphysics so much. I've asked you before (I think, though that might have been in my head) and now I know. Cool.

Also, I think I'm going to address your questions in a post, along with an explanation (if I can manage it) as to why I'm so deeply interested in metaphysical questions of God's existence and such.

I Really Heart Tinfoil Hats! March 3, 2009 at 12:32 AM  

I don't think you ever asked me really. . . or I never gave you a valid response. IDK. Whatev. Look forward to reading your next post on the subject.